Filming begins for new Tom Cruise movie in Germany

Jul 19, 2007, 17:16 GMT

A flying World War II-Messerschmitt-fighter during the shooting of Hollywood-thriller \'Valkyrie\' in Loepten, Germany, 19 July 2007. The movie is based on an attempted Hitler-assassination. US actor Tom Cruise stars the role of Hitler-assassin Colonel Claus Schenk Count of Stauffenberg. EPA/Arno Burgi

Berlin - Hollywood star Tom Cruise began filming Thursday for a new movie about a plot to kill Hitler.

Cruise, 45, is playing Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who was executed by a firing squad after failing in his bid to blow up the Nazi dictator with a briefcase bomb in 1944.

The first scenes from the film Valkyrie were shot on a disused airstrip in the state of Brandenburg surrounding Berlin, according to Studio Babelsberg, the German co-producer.

The German Federal Film Fund approved subsidies worth 4.8 million euros (6.6 million dollars) for the Bryan Singer-directed film, which has aroused controversy in Germany.

The film crew have been banned from the Berlin building where the assassination attempt took place, officially because of fears that filming would lower the dignity of a memorial.

But German politicians had earlier assailed Cruise over his advocacy of Scientology and demanded such a ban. Scientology is suspected by many Germans of being anti-democracy.

US commentators, cinema industry leaders and part of the media have attacked the ban, insisting Cruise's beliefs have no relevance to his starring role in Valkyrie.

Stauffenberg put a bomb under a table in a building at the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's secret base in the woods near what is Ketrzyn in contemporary Poland. But Hitler survived the blast and within days many of those involved in the plot on his life were rounded up.

Stauffenberg is revered in Germany as a national hero for his July 20, 1944 bid to kill the Nazi dictator.

Studio Babelsberg's deputy chief executive, Christoph Fisser, said 'Cruise views Stauffenberg as a hero and will play him that way.' He said the script had been carefully researched.

The film, also starring Kenneth Branagh, Carice van Houten, Thomas Kretschmann, Christian Berkel and Tom Wilkinson, is reported to be costing 80 million euros.